03-16-10 Intel Westmere-EP ChatThis is a featured page



Technical Community - Background Reading

Official Information from Intel after launch (March 16th)
Performance comparisons (older Xeon generations and AMD Opteron)
Information available before launch

Chat Transcript



Intel_GWagnon Intel Xeon 5600 Series Processors: http://www.intel.com/itcenter/products/xeon/5600/index.htm
Intel_GWagnon Wooohooo!!!
surbahns Can't wait to hear about the Intel Xeon 5600 Series Processors! :)
Corey Glad to be here. The links to the Xeon 5600 Series were helpful.
Dell-ScottH Corey, you’ll have to thank Erson when he joins, he's great at digging up Internet gold.
Dell-ScottH Hey Erson, we were just talking about you. Thanks for adding all those great links to the page. :-)
erson No problem.
Dell-ScottH I see we have some new faces, so I'll throw some helpful things out.
Dell-ScottH First, have fun and don't worry about interrupting anyone. It's a chat, we can keep up.
Dell-ScottH Next, there will be a transcript posted on this same link, so don't worry about writing down any of the links, they'll be here for you tomorrow.
Dell-ScottH And if you see a link, be safe and right click on it or you might be kicked from the chat. It’s a weird client issue.
Dell-ScottH If you do get kicked out, just use "action: recent room history" to catch up on what you missed.
Dell-ScottH And with that I'd like to welcome everyone to this week’s chat, the launch of the Intel Xeon 5600 Series Processors, a.k.k the Westmere-EP family of processors.
Dell-ScottH We have several talented people from Intel and Dell with us today.
Dell-ScottH Please everyone introduce your self at one time! :-)
Dell-ScottH This is when it starts to get fun; the intermingling of conversations is my favorite part.
Intel_GWagnon Thanks for allowing us at Intel to join you today. We're happy to discuss our latest mutual offering around the Intel Xeon 5600 Series Processors.
Dell-JeffL Hey! I'm Jeff Layton. I'm the enterprise technologist for HPC for Dell in the Americas.
Intel-ChadM Hi. I'm Chad Martin, a field applications engineer for Intel based in Austin, Texas.
Dell-ScottH Greg Wagnon runs the @intelxeon twitter account and the Intel Server Room community.
Corey Corey McCormick with New Dominion, a small petroleum company in Oklahoma.
Dell-GarimaK Hi, I'm Garima Kochhar, engineer with Dell's HPCC team.
jmcgehee John Mcgehee with JDA Software Group, formerly i2 Technologies.
DELL-ScottP Hi all. I am Scott Patti, one of the engineers who worked on the Westmere-EP effort here at Dell.
Intel-SteveT Hi, I'm Steve Thorne, the product line manager for the Intel Xeon 5000 Series.
Dell-MonicaG Hi I'm Monica Gonzalez, I am also one of the engineers who worked on Westmere-EP effort at Dell.
afuochi Hello everyone! I'm Andre the Enterprise PR person at Dell.
Dell-ScottH As we get going, feel free to kick out any questions. We'll weed through them and respond.
erson Hi, I'm the guy who refreshed Intel’s homepage like crazy 12 hours ago to get all the links for this chat start page. :)
Corey Thanks very much Erson!
Dell-ScottH :-)
Dell-JeffL LOL
surbahns When can we expect the Intel Xeon 5680 to be in the R710 server line?
Dell-ScottH First for the Intel folks, what are some of the great new features in this chip?
Intel-SteveT We are very excited about the Xeon 5600 Series (aka "Westmere-EP").
Dell-ScottH I'd also like to learn more about the Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) features of these chips, where's the best place to learn more about that feature?
Intel-SteveT It's based on Intel's 32 nanometer Logic technology. It allowed us to include 6-cores and 50% more on-board memory.
Dell-ScottH Or maybe I'm getting ahead of myself and being greedy, but how many cores/threads?
Intel-SteveT Up to six cores and 12 threads with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology.
Intel_GWagnon And, all at the same or better power envelope.
Intel-SteveT What resulted with the Xeon 5600 is either: up to 60% more performance or, if you held performance constant to Xeon 5500 Series (Nehalem-EP), a 30% power reduction.
erson For more about performance go to: http://www.intel.com/performance/server/xeon/summary.htm
Dell-ScottH From the Dell side, which new servers will feature this microprocessor?
Dell-ScottH And is there anything important to note if I have an existing server and want to upgrade?
erson The following will feature this new microprocessor: the entire line of two-socket PowerEdge servers, including two blade servers (M710, M610), four rack servers (R710, R610, R510, R410) and three tower servers (T710, T610, T410).
Intel_GWagnon FYI: Dell's press release: http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/press-releases/2010-3-16-poweredge-westmere.aspx
Corey From those performance links it seems as though the biggest advantage was that you got to add most of the horsepower of an extra two cores without having to add the infrastructure for another server. The total wattage went up on the high end about proportional to the increase in the core count.
Dell-GarimaK Existing servers need a Bios and iDRAC firmware upgrade to use the “Westmere-EP” processors.
Cesar What is the status of obtaining Dell PowerEdge R610’s with the Nehalem-EP?
erson Intel: How much did the power gating of uncore help to reduce power compared to going to 32 nanometers?
Dell-ScottH Corey, I personally think this is a huge thing and will drive us away from the bigger and bigger multi-socketed servers that some of the other vendors are doing.
Corey What about the workstation applications for the Xeon 5600?
Intel-ChadM Corey, wattage actually stays the same if you look at the same frequency. The extra top end wattage was to get a higher frequency.
Corey Scott, I agree. It is rare that I see the need for more than two sockets, and even 4 is on the edge of diminishing returns.
Dell-GarimaK Corey, with some HPC applications too, total power consumption stayed about the same or was lower compared to Nehalem-EP. (12 cores vs. 8 cores)
Intel-SteveT Erson: 32 nanometers provided a significant reduction in power consumption. It allowed us to maintain similar core frequency as Xeon 5500 Series (Nehalem-EP) at common TDPs.
erson "While primarily aimed at workloads requiring systems of 4 sockets or more, there is an emerging interest in 2-socket systems based on the Intel Xeon processor 7000 class. Such systems will be in the market starting with the Intel Xeon processor 7500 series."
erson That quote is from the server selection PDF from Intel.
DELL-ScottP Cesar, Can you elaborate on your question regarding Dell PowerEdge R610’s and Nehalem-EP?
Intel-ChadM Corey, We're excited about Westmere-EP in workstations. While some applications don't scale with cores, keeping frequency the same allows those applications to still perform well, enable more multi-tasking scenarios, and really scale up performance on high thread count workloads.
erson Xeon 5600 also supports low power DDR3 which brings down the normal 1.5V to 1.35v. That will make a difference with all those memory sockets.
Dell-ScottH Well, we'll just have to wait for the Xeon 7500 announcement then! :-)
jmcgehee So, single threaded performance is the same as Nehalem-EP?
surbahns When will we be able to configure systems on the Dell Web site with Xeon 5600 processors?
Dell-ScottH Andre, Frank, when will they be in the online configurator for customers to order?
Corey Chad, those are exactly the problems we face. Many of the workstation applications are clock limited because of the issues with developing efficient multi-threaded applications.
Intel-ChadM Single-threaded performance is roughly the same as Nehalem-EP. It can be better when workloads can take advantage of the extra cache.
Intel-ChadM Corey, Does more cache help your workloads?
Dell-FrankR Cesar, Dell PowerEdge R610 offers Nehalem-EP today. New Nehalem-EP SKUs should be available next week with the Westmere-EP processors. Some Westmere-EP SKUs are available today. Please see Dell.com
erson So, what is the Intel Turbo Boost Technology binning? I haven't found that information on the Intel homepage yet.
Corey Chad, sometimes. I think the Turbo Boost Technology combines with the cache to help a bit. We are just now upgrading from the Intel Xeon WS CPU to try the next generation. Core i7 helps a bit.
Dell-FrankR Surbahns, Westmere-EP processors will be generally available on Dell PowerEdge R710 next week. Two SKUs are available now. Please see Dell.com
surbahns Great, thanks Frank.
Intel_GWagnon Erson, the Turbo bins you get depend on the SKU.
erson Yes, but what are they?
Intel-ChadM Increasing cache will continue to be a knob we use in addition to some other tweaks in Westmere-EP. We also are working with workstation ISV's to help them get more threaded, but as you can imagine it's a long process. I think they are starting to see the need more now though.
Intel-SteveT Erson, Turbo Boost improvements vary by processor speed and thermal design power (TDP). In general, one exception is an additional bin/133MHz for 130W TDP/6-core. The 95W TDP/6-core will give you 2 bins/266mhz.
erson For the Xeon 5500 I could find that information in the Specification Update.
Corey Chad, the Nehalem-EP is the first time in quite a while we have seen a significant increase in workstation performance per the money spent. We could always spend more money, but the returns were not proportional to the cost.
erson So, for a 95W TDP/6-core it's perhaps 2/2/3/3/3/4?
Dell-FrankR Selected Westmere-EP SKUs are in the online configurator now. More will be added early next week.
erson It's was pretty much different for every model on the Xeon 5500 Series, so I assume it's the case with Xeon 5600 as well.
Corey In looking at all the SKUs for these CPUs, it can be a pretty complex task to select the "correct" CPU for each application.
erson Oh, I see that virtualization round-trip latency has been decreased by 12% compared to Xeon 5500 Series.
Intel-ChadM Erson, 95W TDP/6-core is 2/2/2/2/3/3.
Dell-ScottH It definitely has gotten more difficult from the days of "just get the biggest one."
erson Chad, great, hope you release a document with that information.
Corey I think all the virtualization enhancements are really improving our VM performance and scalability.
Intel_GWagnon Not sure it is more difficult, as much as it is actually easier to find a solution that matches your needs.
Intel-ChadM 60W T DP/6-core is 2/2/3/3/4/4.
Dell-JeffL Having so many options means you have to understand your application and environment better (not always a bad thing).
erson Corey, glad you got rid of the Westmere-EP models with dual CPU support though.
Dell-ScottH So many different application profiles. Any plans from Intel on releasing a paper about best processor per type of application profile?
Corey Greg, not when you factor in costs/pricing that is not linear.
Intel_GWagnon Per workload, it will take some research since many people run multiple workloads on a given server.
erson It looks like Westmere-EP models this time will only be Up, correct?
Er1cb There'll be more of an emphasis to write code that takes advantage of newer processors.
Dell-JeffL Greg, definitely true.
Intel_GWagnon Then there are those that only run one workload per server, and so it continues.
Dell-ScottH Guess that's why we all still have jobs in technology!
Intel_GWagnon Choosing a price point, and general power efficiency level that you might want is always a good place to start.
Intel-ChadM Erson, that's correct because the Dell 130W DP models are now supported on servers in addition to workstations.
Corey Absolutely, kind of like surfing.
Dell-JeffL In the HPC world we have pretty good tools for characterizing applications, but it takes work and if you have a bunch of them life is very interesting. :)
Dell-GarimaK The processor finder on Intel’s Web site lists Turbo Boost bins for Nehalem. Maybe Westmere-EP details will get added there in time. http://processorfinder.intel.com/list.aspx?procfam=528&sspec=&ordcode=
erson Chad, those are great Turbo Boost binnings. Definitely an improvement to the first generation of binnings on the first Intel Core i7s.
Intel_GWagnon Lv SKU's (l5600) are rather good at performance and low power as well.
erson Garimak, they should put the information on ark.intel.com as well in that case.
Corey I am looking forward to keeping our server room HVAC alone for a while. Adding CPU without adding A/C will be great!
erson I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Intel Advanced Encryption Standard - New Instructions (AES-NI) yet. Tell us more about it.
Dell-ScottH Corey, I think many people are very happy with that right now.
Intel_GWagnon Erson, shhh! AES-NI is encrypted and therefore secret. ;o)
Intel-SteveT Erson, we expect good things from AES-NI (Intel Advanced Encryption Standard - New Instructions). These new instructions allow many more uses for AES, whether it's in full disk encryption or SSL transactions.
surbahns Thank you for the update. I can't wait to order some Dell PowerEdge R710s next week with the Intel Xeon 5680s. See ya!
Intel-ChadM The exciting thing about AES-NI for me is HTTPS with Westmere-EP >20% faster that vanilla HTTP with Nehalem-EP.
Corey The iSCI checksum instructions in the Xeon 5500 CPU really changed our iSCI world. Bad for the iSCI HBA vendors, but good for our wallets. It seems that would be a big win if it trickle down to the Cpus used in iSCI SAN targets.
Intel-SteveT Erson, we built some technology demonstrations based AES-NI that show significant improvement in performance of encryption/decryption when taking advantage of those new instructions. Quite a few software vendors are supporting them, including MacAfee, Microsoft, Oracle and VMware.
Corey Are the new AES-NI instructions supported today on existing code?
Intel-SteveT Surbahns, thanks for your participation and positive comments!
Intel_GWagnon An article from InfoWorld.com this morning showed 400% improvement on his test with encrypting a large file using AES-NI enabled/disabled.
Intel-SteveT Corey, the existing AES-code needs to be modified to take advantage of the new instructions. Intel provides a number of compliers and tools to accomplish this.
erson BitLocker supports AES_NI.
Intel-ChadM AES-NI was communicated to ISVs more than a year ago. OpenSSL supports it, although and I don't know which version, and GCC 4.4.0 supports it as well.
Dell-ScottH Here’s the article: http://www.infoworld.com/node/116588
Corey Stevet, thanks. I wasn't sure how long it would be before we see the benefits.
Corey Erson, I didn't know that. That is really good news.
surbahns Quick question if I may. If you compare the Xeon 5570 and Xeon 5680 (http://ark.intel.com/compare.aspx?ids=37111,47916) you will see the Xeon 5680 doesn't have virtualization technology support. Why is that?
Intel-ChadM Corey, the CPU utilization improvement with BitLocker is pretty dramatic.
erson Also, Xeon 5600 supports for 18x16 GB while Xeon 5500 "only" supports 12x16 GB.
Intel_GWagnon 'only'... :)
erson Maybe I should have typed """only""""
Corey I think the lower power memory should really help keep things cooler. It gets pretty hot here in the summer. I don't think you can ever have too much RAM.
Intel-SteveT Surbahns: I think that is a typo in ark.intel.com. Xeon 5680 certainly supports virtualization technology.
erson "According to Samsung, 48 GB of 40nm low power Ddr3 1066 should use on average about 28W (an average of 16 hour idle and 8 hours of load). This compares favorably with the 66W for the early 60nm Ddr3 and the currently popular 50nm based Dram which should consume about 50W. So in a typical server configuration, you could save – roughly estimated – 22W or about 10% of the total server power consumption."
Intel_GWagnon I know the ark.intel.com guys. I will make sure they get it cleaned up. Thanks for pointing it out.
Corey Erson, we are at our thermal limits for the most part and in order to add either more SAN or more CPU, something has to give.
Corey The Xeon 5600 Series seems like a good step in the right direction.
Intel-SteveT Greg, please have them fix for all Westmere-EP SKUs. Virtualization technology is supported on all of them, but for some reason ark.intel.com doesn't reflect properly.
erson Intel Xeon also supports two Dimms at 1333mhz, while the Xeon 5500 would throttle down to 1066mhz. Although I have seen that bios a couple of months ago made 1333mhz possible for two Dimms with the Xeon 5500 as well. (perhaps not supported by Intel though?).
surbahns With 10GB iSCSI NICs we prefer to use VMDirectPath that uses the Vt-d. So I'm glad to hear this is a typo.
Corey We can consolidate several of our older Dell PowerEdge 2850s into just a couple of Dell PowerEdge R series and save 500-2000 BTU each.
Intel-SteveT Erson, 2 DIMMs per channel at 1333mhz is supported by Intel, but for Intel Xeon 5600 only.
Corey Surbahns, which 10 iSCSI NICs are you using?
Intel_GWagnon I already sent the request.
erson Yeah, seems like HP and Dell support 2 DIMMs per channel at 1333mhz with Xeon 5500 when using the latest bios though.
Dell-JeffL Erson, that's correct.
surbahns Corey, they are Intel, let me get the model number.
erson Stevet: three DIMMs per channel still drops it down to 800mhz or just 1066mhz?
Corey We have the Intel 10G, but they do not offload iSCSI AFAIK.
Intel-SteveT Erson, unfortunately max speed at three DIMMs per channel is only 800mhz.
Corey Stevet, so is the 18 x 16G 3 channels or ???
erson Corey: yes
erson 1 channel = 6 DIMMs, 2 channel = 12 DIMMs, 3 channel = 18 DIMMs
Corey Erson - so 6 DIMMs is the max for memory bandwidth?
erson Hmm, poor wording by me there.
erson Each CPU has three memory channels and each channels supports up to three DIMMs.
Dell-GarimaK Corey and Erson, Memory bandwidth is good with 2 DIMMs per channel too. So 12 DIMMs total.
erson Corey, Yes, if your workload needs memory bandwidth you should only populate up to 12 DIMMs.
Corey I see. 2 DIMMs x 3 Channels x 2 CPU
erson Since then you can use 1333mhz DIMMs (if your CPU supports it).
Corey It would be awesome if all this is spelled out in the technical notes for the Dell servers... :-)
Dell-JeffL Corey, just be sure to get 1333 Mhz DIMMs and make them the same size if you want to squeeze every last ounce of memory bandwidth (also use RDIMMs).
Dell-GarimaK Corey, that's right, for 1333mhz
erson You need the X-models to be able to utilize 1333mhz DIMMs, right?
Corey Excellent info.
Dell-ScottH Corey, Jeffl had a great blog post on it for the first Xeons, Jeff you have anything planned, or can point back to that blog?
Intel-SteveT Erson, yes, typically the Intel Xeon 5600 processors with an "X" product number support the fastest memory speeds.
Dell-JeffL Nothing new planned, so the old blog is still good.
erson Anything with a 6.4GT/s QPI supports 1333mhz DIMMs
Dell-GarimaK Corey, our team did a white paper on Memory guidelines for HPCC applications for Nehalem-EP. This was with the first Bios we had, so data is a little old now. But you might be interested in it. http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/business~solutions~whitepapers~en/documents~11g-memory-hpc-wp.pdf.aspx
Intel-ChadM The 1333mhz DIMMs exception is the Intel Xeon L5640. Other than that it's the Xeon and Westmere-EP SKUs.
Intel_GWagnon Corey, regarding Intel 10GB support for iSCI, ping them about it at http://twitter.com/intelethernet. I believe they do support it.
Dell-JeffL http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/04-08-2009+-+nehalem+and+memory+configurations
Intel-SteveT Erson, not always the case. Intel Xeon L5640 also supports 1333mhz memory, and it only has 5.86GT/s Qpi
Corey Not all the Xeon though seem to do 1333mhz.
Dell-ScottH Jeff you beat me to the copy paste! :-)
Corey Greg, thanks.
Intel_GWagnon No problem.
Dell-ScottH We're coming up on the end of the hour and I know some will have to drop so I wanted to thank everyone before that happened.
Dell-ScottH Of course, anyone/everyone is welcome to stay as long as they wish.
Intel-ChadM Corey, on my chart all of the Xeon SKUs list 1333mhz. Which one are you seeing show up differently?
erson Glad it's a session on Thursday as well. It feels like we just started.
Dell-ScottH Thanks to all the Intel and Dell teams for joining.
Dell-ScottH Yes, please join us this Thursday at same time for continuation of this chat
Intel-SteveT Thanks for inviting us today. Please send all of your most difficult questions to Greg Wagnon. ;-)
Dell-ScottH :-)
erson Deep Diiiive
Dell-ScottH We’re diving deeper on Thursday!
Intel_GWagnon Appreciate the questions and the time. Feel free to send questions to the @Intelxeon account on Twitter and I will track down some answers.
Corey Chadm, http://www.intel.com/assets/en_us/pdf/prodbrief/323501.pdf
Corey Jeffl, thanks. This link though says that the 1333mhz is for only one DIMM.
Dell-JeffL Corey, which link?
Dell-GarimaK Corey, Keffl...the original memory article you did, Jeff.
Dell-JeffL Corey – oops, you're correct. That was before the updated BIOS was released. I need to edit that blog, don't I?
Dell-GarimaK That was with the initial BIOS.
Corey Ok, thanks.
Dell-GarimaK Starting BIOS 1.1.4 for Nehalem-EP, Dell does support 2DPC @ 133mhz?
erson Support for 1GB pages... hoho.
Dell-ScottH Thanks to everyone ... I have to take off, but feel free to talk amongst yourselves and see you again in two days.
Intel-ChadM Corey: I think that PDF is mistaken. I'll go ask that the team to look at it.
erson Could be handy in when my server has a couple of TB of RAM.
Corey Scott - Is there another on Thursday?
erson Corey: same time, same bat-channel.
Corey Thanks to you all. This was very informative.
erson http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/03-18-10+intel+westmere-ep+deep+dive+chat
Dell-ScottH Thank you Corey, appreciate the questions and participation.
erson "One six-core Xeon 2.93 is worth two six-core Opterons at 2.6 Ghz."
erson That's the VMmark result on AnandTech.
Corey Erson, that link has a broken calendar item.
Corey It is a recurring link for 2009 only.
erson You will find the link on the front page tomorrow.
erson Or you can just find it in the left side menu under "Blog Chats and RSS" and "Chat Topics and Transcripts"
Corey Thanks, I was just letting someone know. It has the right description, but the .ICS file is not correct that is generates... same problem with the one today.
erson On the 30th we have a chat about Nehalem-EX.
erson I don't use the calendar ICS-files. I just follow @Dellservergeek on Twitter. :)
erson I love the idle power of Xeon 5600.
Corey Indeed... thanks again. Our servers really spend 12+ hours that way. The 5600 should really help.
erson Hmm, Intel NICs doesn't have iSCI offload to the best of my knowledge
Corey I thought the same.
Intel_GWagnon Take a look at Intel Xeon L5640. I have that running in a white box system and total system idle is ~58w. Very nice.
erson It does, however, support iSCI boot.
Corey The 10G NIC works great, but no iSCSI. On most machines we don't care as the W2K8 iSCSI client uses the checksum and so performance is not a big deal. On VMware though we need the CPU back.
Dell-d_glynn Your CPU-bound rather then memory-bound in your VMware enviroment?
erson Ahh, the product brief for the latest 10GbE adapters with 82599 says that the latest Intel Xeon support the CRC instruction set which makes CRC calculation a lot easier.
erson http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/prodbrief/322217.pdf
Corey D_glynn, not during the daily workloads.Tthe users are easy.
Corey D_glynn, it is during our maintenance, backups, antivirus scans, defragmentations, etc.
erson I wonder if the 32NM quad cores are Hexacores with two cores disabled or if it's an entirely own design.
Corey Erson, a great way to salvage a chip with a bad CPU...
erson Yeah, common practice to increase yields.
Corey Erson, I would guess you are correct. Each CPU is worth a great deal in revenue if it can be salvaged. Yields are really tough at the start of a newer process I am told.
Dell-d_glynn Corey, then when is it that you are lacking in CPU, and feel that NICs with iSCSI offload would help?
erson and by the way, there is an Intel Xeon W3680 released today as well for single socket workstations.
erson It has the same price and specifications as the consumer Core i7 980X, $999.
Corey That could help a lot. Much better price than some of the other workstation CPUs.
erson I better not tell my developers about that one or they will be begging hard!
Corey D-glynn, during our CPU/I/o intensive windows. Of course we would all be much better off with 3 x 6ghz, than 6 x 3ghz, but thermally that doesn't work today. Mostly it is our dependence on single/limited threaded applications. The schedulers do move things around,
erson Power consumption of an entirely idle Xeon 5680 is ~6.3.
Corey But the more predictable response of the HBA makes for smoother I/o.
Dell-d_glynn I see, thanks Corey.
Corey D-glynn, filling up the I/o for an LTO-4 is pretty hard. It sustains ~120MB/second before hardware compression. That is a heck of a stream to maintain.
erson The fastest CPU for single threaded applications would be the Intel Core i5-670.
Corey D-glynn, One example would be to compare the I/o numbers from FC-HBA with iSCSI. The aggregate numbers can look great, but it takes a lot of work to get the pipe flowing.
erson It Turbo Boosts up to 3.73ghz and has 2MB per core (it's a dual core with HT).
erson It's also a Westmere-EP.
Corey Erson, you might think so but check the SPECint number and it does not work that way.
erson Why is it slower?
Corey It is. Significantly.
Corey Sorry, are you asking me why?
erson Yes
Corey For a single desktop the i870 was king last I looked. I don’t know about the 980, but the 9-series was more for a CPU upgrade than the entire machine costs.
Corey I think it had to do with the memory/cache architecture when I looked into it. They also changed something in the branch predictor maybe... that brain cell is not high confidence though.
erson Yes, but weren't we talking about single thread performance which would translate to throttling down all cores but one?
Corey Yes, but SPECint is for a single CPU, but SPECint Rate was the aggregate.
erson Do you mean a single core?
Dell-d_glynn Corey, it sounds like you are expecting an iSCCI offload card to perform akin to an FC-HBA, am I reading you right?
erson Dell has a good partnership with Emulex if you want a good hardware iSCSI offload NIC.
erson The broadcoms do it as well.
Dell-d_glynn Is it supported by VMware?
erson Emulex?
Dell-d_glynn Yup
Dell-d_glynn I suppose I should know the answer to that. :)
erson I don't know but it must be supported. Both HP and IBM got their own versions of the same NIC.
erson It also has full hardware support for FCOE.
Corey D_glynn, not exactly like it. We are trying to consolidate the number of physical connections to our servers.
erson Corey, Xsigo is the thing for you then.
Corey Erson, thanks for your input.
Corey Erson, I will take a look. :-)
Corey D_glynn, Two dual-port 10G NICs with iSCSI gives us bandwidth, and redundancy that is enough for pretty much any application, VM, server, etc...
Corey The new Dell 24-port 10G switches are a big enabler for that. Cisco 65xx switches are $10K per port (list). We can't do 10G x 4 per server. With the new 8024 and a reasonable 10G iSCSI NIC, we only need two x8 slots and all our I/o is covered. That means that 1U, or even 2/3U servers or blades can take care of everything.
Corey Erson, FCOE is great, but doesn’t help the $/Gbps for storage. if you put FCOE in the description, the price goes up $1K per device/port.
Dell-d_glynn There is always something newer on the horizon.
Dell-d_glynn You seem to have a good grasp of your environment and it needs.
Dell-d_glynn Right, time for me to head off.
Dell-d_glynn Good luck, Corey.
Corey Thanks all....


No user avatar
cbemily 		Latest page update: made by cbemily , Mar 17 2010, 4:45 PM EDT (about this update About This Update cbemily added transcript - cbemily

4572 words added
24 words deleted

view changes
- complete history)
Keyword tags: Intel Westmere
More Info: links to this page

Threads for this page

There are no threads for this page.  Be the first to start a new thread.
Browse by Keywords
Loading...